PTA Temporarily Blocks WordPress.com in Pakistan

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, in a recent development, has asked Pakistani Internet service providers to block the access of WordPress.com in Pakistan. As of now, the website is inaccessible on all major Pakistani ISPs.

Just to be recalled, WordPress is a blogging platform that hosts millions of blogs from across the world.

While we don’t have any word from PTA on why this decision was made and on what grounds such popular and so widely used blogging platform was blocked, we anticipate that it will get unblocked soon.

Not to be mentioned, PTA was just granted the powers to monitor content on Internet and block any indecent, blasphemous or anti state website. Previously such decisions were made by inter-ministerial committee that was dissolved on directions of a recently issued court order. Prime minister of Pakistan, after inter-ministerial committee was dissolved, granted PTA the authority to control content on the Internet.

We have seen PTA in past making decisions in haste, and later reversing them.

This is a developing story and we will update it when we get any further details.

Update

A source at Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has confirmed ProPakistani that WordPress.com is temporarily blocked in Pakistan due to severe issues related to national security. It appears now that blocking decision is somewhat related to Pakistan day.

Source, who wanted to remain unnamed, said that exact content that caused the blockade can’t be revealed due to seriousness of the matter.

Source further confirmed that WordPress.com will be unblocked in two days from now.

Update

Authorities say that the matter that triggered the blockade has been resolved.

Aamir Attaa

Tech reporter with over 10 years of experience, founder of ProPakistani.PK

Hazim Faisal

yeah just ban every major website in the world and go to north-korea-age cause why in ****’s name would we need technology keep it up pta!

Scroogle Hater

Lol north-korea-age?

Shahid Saleem

pakistan ka matlab kia? ban ban ban karna!

Guest

BAN Shahid Saleem Account! I would be very happy :P

Shahid Saleem

Muhammad Amir, you would simply be proving my point :):):)

Muhammad Aamir

hahahahahha!! you’re a genius, seriously :D

how did you detect the comment? :P

Shahid Saleem

Now now, I cannot give away all my secrets :):):)

Muhammad Aamir

HAHAHAH! ALL YOUR SECRETS, HAHAH!! You didn’t give me the secret of YOUTUBE! YOU HAVEN’T EVER GIVEN ME ANY SECRET, UNCLE!! LOL!! :D I know a way to detect, by the way! :D The method is simple, just click the link which you want to detect when Disqus loads – at the same time – but not fully, it will be showing the name of the persons who has commented as a guest – by taking a screenshot at the same time! #SOME_MEHNAT_IS_DARKAR :D

But I know you have an easy way, because you’re a software engineer and I’m a first year premedical student!

BadarUI

Aamir bhai how it possible? Indian Cellular company signals are coming in Karachi.

Muhammad Aamir

I’m not the admin of this website. You can ask this question to @aamir7:disqus.

Shahid Saleem

I have now reveal my secret for avoiding Youtube ban on my facebook page. I do not claim that no one else knew about this features but no one else I know has ever mentioned it in public.

Now what do you think of me?

Aamir

I don’t need now because I have become an SEO Expert LOL! Running my site well thanks to SEO :)

PS: Commented a year later. Must be using IE from MARS :P

Shahid Saleem

If you had read my post you would know why I waited until now. Google revealed some other product that uses same tech

Aamir

I have seen 60+ hours of SEO videos (Paid and free courses), you knew I would watch them? And you tried to find this post to comment me? Daily update my knowledge for learning SEO. Give me your 2004 blog upon you are not working on, it would give me a better ranking. LOL!

Shahid Saleem

> And you tried to find this post to comment me?

??!! tried??!? I knew which post to find, I have good memory and disqus makes it easy. Ddin’t take longer than 5 minutes.

Aamir

I have become your FAN :P Wanna meet with you someday :D

orange

I’m sorry but you sound like a jerk. Did you just learn some new English swears from some where and were too excited to use them here? Maybe you can learn to talk in a proper way next time, because talking about faults of others you’ve to fix yourself first.

Hazim Faisal

btw play store b nai chal raha lahore k majority mei on ptcl broadband, its been like this for over a week i contacted them and at first they said “they’re working on it” and then yesterday this other guy said that there’s been no such issue

yea that’s it! block every website and make internet a useless thing.. great good going PTA.. i dont know how wordpress matters in national security? where are our defense analysts??? -_- >..<Zaid Sparrow

If only they could think for a second what message this will send to the world. I am all for “national security” but they could have just asked WordPress to comply or blocked the relevant URLs (they already have paid 57 million Pakistani rupees to acquire this solution through FinFisher).

Not accessible on Qubee in Islamabad. Would anyone like to enlighten me how WordPress.com possess severe threat to national security?

As per my knowledge, WordPress.com is running on Open Source WordPress platform available at WordPress.org and more then 23% of the websites in the whole world are powered by WordPress including some of the official websites of the Government of Pakistan e.g. Planning Commission (http://pc.gov.pk)

Muhammad Haqnawaz

They are idiot we can open any blocked site by using any common proxy or plugin like zenmat!

Pointraiser

working. But may have been banned due to ihyae khilafat blog.

Shahid Saleem

That is also a blog on blogspot, but blogspot is not banned.

Lets look at logic

It has been permanently blocked just like Youtube at the request of the ISI.

WordPress.com hosts all types of blogs on its free blog.wordpress.com service. This includes baluchi websites.

Salman Mujtaba Baltistani

My blog on WordPress.com is accessible now again. :) am going to export the blog data right now , otherwise there is always a chance of royal flush.